Business & Financial Affairs: What we have to offer

Business & Financial Affairs Takeover, restructuring, insolvency – stressful times for any company. An almost inevitable reflex is to reduce communication to two fundamental questions: How are we going to get the numbers through? And how are we going to get through the coming weeks without any bad press?

What often gets left by the wayside is making use of communication as a leadership tool that holds the company together from within. And also creating and conveying a clear picture of what the company will actually be like ‘afterwards’. What will it be doing? What will its new values be?

At what point is the crisis over? Working out the price of the deal is just the start. As is finding a new investor. Or finalising a budget plan for the reorganisation. The problem can only really be said to be solved when the renewal process truly begins to gain momentum. And that’s something that depends on a lot of different players – who all need to be won over. Just flashing the numbers around is no longer enough to convince investors or analysts.

Clearly defined prospects for the future will win allies. Managers who motivate; employees who show initiative; public figures and politicians who are prepared to offer their support; and investors who will also invest their trust. To achieve all this, it is necessary to create a living picture of what the company is actually going to be when it emerges on the other side.

Business & Financial Affairs ensures that the numbers game becomes reality.

From a communications point of view, there are four success factors during critical situations such as takeovers, restructurings or insolvencies:

B&F Affairs: Text 2

The services offered by Deekeling Arndt Advisors include:

B&F Affairs: Text 3

Mergers, acquisitions & divestments

The times when it was left up to the banks and the capital market to judge the success of a deal are long gone. Nowadays all stakeholders are quick to raise their voices and they expect to be heard. Those who only consider the success of the takeover itself when communicating a deal are likely to fail – at the latest during the subsequent integration phase.

But those who want to achieve more than just ‘putting the deal to bed’ – in other words, really want to realise the ideas behind it – need to be aware from the start that the moment news of the takeover, fusion or divestment emerges is the moment continuity stops. At a stroke, the entire social framework of a company is called into question. Put simply, the announcement of a deal is synonymous with an announcement to the workforce that “everything that mattered yesterday and that you could rely on is hanging in the balance today.” What will tomorrow bring? How will we run our business? Who is still going to be involved? There’s no one who can answer these questions.

Consequently, between the announcement of a deal and the actual implementation – for instance, during the integration – communications has a huge gap to fill. Its role is to provide an idea of what the future company will look like and the role each individual will play within it – as quickly and as plausibly as possible.

Ensuring a takeover doesn’t fail prematurely due to resistance from inside or outside the company, requires a logic that encompasses more than just the figures. And it needs a more far-reaching strategy than that of just the deal itself.


Restructuring & recapitalisation

Savings potential, synergy effects, optimisation levers, cost benefits. When it’s time to tighten the corporate belt, clear language and explanations seem to get left behind. The communication of meaning then only occurs by means of entrepreneurial mathematics. Yet there is practically no more important moment to issue declarations about the future (= communicating strategy) than during restructuring and recapitalisation phases. Because it is precisely then – when everybody is being expected to put everything on the line – that a company needs to be able to explain what it’s all actually for. To put it simply: to provide a clear picture of what will follow the vale of tears. Otherwise, nobody will want to stay the distance on this painful path.

And the fact that the sceptics and opponents of the stormy course are often extremely well organised makes this all the more important. It can be seen time and again in hard-fought battles that workers’ representatives are wily old campaigners who are able to call on a efficient communications infrastructure, use potent language and powerful imagery and regularly call on prominent allies for support. So those who want to remain at the head of the hunt and not end up being the hunted, at least when it comes to creating opinion, need to strategically plan the content, form and delivery of their communications.

To ensure that employees are not left feeling drained and lacking in confidence at the end of a restructuring or recovery phase, a communications department needs to grab the bull by the horns and – instead of merely accompanying the process – provide them with orientation and a feeling that it all makes sense.


Insolvency & relaunch

The patient’s going to pull through! That’s the news that everyone has been eagerly waiting for. And passing on this information quickly to employees, customers, suppliers, creditors, neighbours and so on, is absolutely vital.

But in the communication of an insolvency process, the focus is not really on announcing the survival of the company. It’s more about the perception of ‘being alive’.

The company only accomplishes a real re-start with a strategy that is plausible to everyone; with a workforce that stays on board – especially the top performers –and believes in the future; with the trust of its customers and suppliers; and in an environment that engenders confidence. Creating just such an environment is the task of communications. It helps to maintain internal harmony, retain the company’s most important performance drivers, and helps to channel the search for a new investor or pave the way for a successful relaunch.

And to make sure that the visit to the insolvency court is quickly followed by a genuine fresh start, communicators must embrace their role as the driving forces behind this successful process.